Technology guide provides an overview of current technologies

(Nanowerk News) Our everyday lives are dictated by technical developments, and we will be increasingly moulded and changed by them. We can only actively help to shape the future if we know what awaits us. So how can we maintain a clear overview? The “Technology Guide: Principles – Applications – Trends” can provide sound assistance. It contains over a hundred articles in which internationally renowned experts give clear descriptions of all the main fields of technology.

The Technology Guide comprehensibly explains current and future technology and is illustrated with numerous photographs, drawings and diagrams. It is aimed at everyone in society, politics, industry or research who is interested in technology – not just specialists, but anyone curious to find out where we are headed. The Technology Guide covers a wide range of topics, from information and communication technology, materials, mobility and transport, to energy, resources, nature and the environment.

Numerous future-oriented technologies and their applications are clearly portrayed, such as virtual worlds and their use in e-business, or interactive television. There is also a chapter dedicated to selforganizing systems and nanosystems, a still fledgling area of research. Here, simple building blocks organize themselves into complex structures with new properties, in much the same way as happens in nature.

Just like tourists navigating their way through a foreign city with guidebooks in their hands, interested readers can familiarize themselves with the technological fields presented in the book.

Professor Hans-Jörg Bullinger, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and publisher of the extensive compendium, stresses that “presenting an overview makes it easier to discuss the material, not just for laymen but also for researchers from different disciplines. New possibilities often emerge at the interfaces between specialist disciplines and fields of expertise, particularly wherever knowledge is pooled in an unusual way.”

The discourse on technology and how to handle it creatively concerns us all, for the technical options available largely determine how we can deal with global challenges such as the world’s growing population, dwindling resources and ever shorter innovation cycles. “We have put an enormous effort into the Technology Guide because we hope it will contribute to a broad understanding of today’s technologies, and that it will inspire readers and spark new ideas.

After all, we should not leave it to others to shape our own future,” stresses Bullinger. Dr. Lothar Behlau, Head of the Strategy and Programs department at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, was in charge of coordinating the intensive work involved. He describes the process: “More than 150 experts from both small and large companies, research establishments, universities, associations and authorities contributed to the Technology Guide’s 13 topic areas, calling on the support of both technology generalists and internationally renowned specialists.”